A telephone rang. Rath hadn’t noticed it until now, even though it seemed out of place in these surroundings. It was an old model. The mouthpiece was still integrated in the body of the machine so that you had to lift the receiver.
‘That’ll be Wolfgang,’ Elisabeth Marquard said. ‘No one calls here otherwise. Answer it, it’ll be for you.’
He hesitated and she made an inviting gesture. Rath took the receiver from the cradle.
‘Yes,’ he said into the trumpet.
‘Inspector, how are you?’
‘You ought to know.’
‘I’m sorry, but you left me with no other choice. You shouldn’t have visited me tonight.’
‘I visited you before. You were perfectly friendly then.’
‘You didn’t have a dog sniffing around my house.’
‘What have you done with Kirie?’
‘You should be worrying about yourself rather than the dog.’
‘You can still go back. Let me go, spare my life. If I die things will only get worse. You don’t seriously believe you can escape arrest? Do you want to have to answer for a policeman’s murder, alongside the others?’
‘You haven’t understood anything, Inspector. This isn’t about murder.’
‘If I’m not mistaken you have two actresses on your conscience. What would you call that?’
‘I didn’t murder those women, I made them immortal.’
‘Tell that to the judge.’
‘The way you’re talking, Inspector, shows that you haven’t understood anything, not that it matters. I just wanted to let you know that I’m sorry. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have another guest to attend to.’
He hung up.
Elisabeth Marquard looked at Rath expectantly. ‘Did he send greetings?’
The woman had a nerve. ‘No,’ he said, and her sense of hope seemed to crumble. He felt his legs suddenly grow weak, but the moment passed. ‘Why does he keep you locked up here?’
She shrugged. ‘Because he hates me? Really it’s his father he ought to hate. He’s the one who locked him up!’
‘Why?’
‘It’s how Dr Schlüter wanted it.’
‘What reason can there possibly be to lock up your own son, Frau Marquard? Was he dangerous, even back then?’
‘Dangerous?’ She looked at him as though even speculating that her son could be dangerous was one of the seven deadly sins. With a shake of the head she turned around and gazed out of the window again. ‘Wolfgang was fourteen when he fell ill. First it was just mumps, but then…the pancreas…a serious inflammation. We feared for his life. He survived, but paid a heavy price.’
‘Diabetes.’
She nodded. ‘Dr Schlüter gave us hope. It wasn’t a total loss. The boy could still produce insulin, but too little. A strict diet, the old doctor said, and Wolfgang can live for many years yet. But the boy was foolish.’
‘That’s why you locked him up? Because he couldn’t have kept to his diet otherwise?’
‘I didn’t lock him up! It was my husband.’
‘Where is your husband? Why isn’t your son avenging him?’
‘Richard has been dead for a long time. Just like Dr Schlüter.’
‘Did your son…?’
‘No, what are you thinking of?’
Speaking had tired her. She fell silent and gazed out of the window.
Rath was finding it increasingly difficult to form coherent thoughts. He had to look for an escape route, and went through the open door into the next room of their luxury prison. ‘Room’ was the wrong expression; these were chambers. A bedchamber with a four-poster bed, in which he would never have been able to get to sleep, then a small library and a spacious drawing room. There was dark wood panelling on every wall.
He tried the windows but they were all sealed. Finally, he reached the dining room; here too the windows were sealed. He tried to go through the second door into the adjoining room, to continue his reconnaissance expedition, but it was locked.
He had reached the end of the prison.
Rath threw himself against the heavy door with all his might, but it wouldn’t give. All it brought him was a painful shoulder. He tried again, and again in vain. It tired him out more than it should have. Finally, sweating and gasping for air, he let himself sink to the floor.
‘What are you doing?’
Elisabeth Marquard had followed him and was standing in the door as pale as a ghost.
‘You shouldn’t exert yourself so much. It’s not good in your condition.’
He couldn’t respond, merely gasp for air.
‘You won’t get out of here, so accept it, and let’s use the time you still have to talk.’
She was just as crazy as her son. Rath looked up at her from the floor, feeble and dejected, and in the process caught sight of something in the wall, next to the big side table: a little double door, dark as the wood panelling, roughly square-shaped and at most half the size of a normal door.
‘What is that?’ he asked.
‘That? It’s the dumb waiter. That’s how they send food up to me. It means the servants don’t have to see my face.’ She laughed her crazy laugh. ‘So that my isolation isn’t broken by anything.’
‘It’s a way out,’ he panted.
‘Impossible. You need a helper.’
‘You can help me!’
‘Why should I? I’ll be alone again. I’m happier with you here.’
‘Didn’t you just tell me you wanted to see the lake again, and feel the wind in your hair?’
‘They’re just dreams. I’ll die here.’
‘How long have you been locked up? How many years? Do you really want to die here? To have both of us die here?’
‘What else?’
‘Don’t just accept what your son is doing to you!’
‘He hates me, and I love him. That’s my fate.’
‘Then take your fate in your hands.’
‘I’ve tried that once already. It doesn’t work. Life never turns out the way you’d like it to. You’re loved by the wrong people…and hated by the wrong people too.’
‘Help me escape from this prison and I promise you’ll see the lake again. And I’ll keep you company as often as you like.’
She seemed to consider, then went to the wall and opened the door. Behind it was a dark crate.
‘Perhaps you’re right.’ She examined him from top to bottom. ‘If you curl up tight, you should fit in.’
Her whisper made her sound like a conspirator.
‘Then you’ll close the door and send me down to the kitchen as if I were your dirty crockery.’ She nodded. ‘Let’s be quick. I don’t know how much time I have left.’
He squeezed himself into the narrow crate. ‘One more question,’ he said, before she closed the door. ‘How do I get the door open again?’
‘It’s a dumb waiter. You can only open it from the outside.’
‘Is anybody still in the kitchen?’ She shrugged. ‘If not, does that mean I’ll die a miserable death in this crate?’
‘Don’t worry. I’ll pull you back up.’
‘So that I can die a miserable death with you. What a prospect,’ he sighed, ‘but keep your fingers crossed. We’ll give it a try!’
Every bone in his body was aching even before Elisabeth Marquard closed the door.
He began his descent.